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Speaker 1: episode contains references to sexual assault and sexual violence. Listener
Speaker 1: discretion is advised. I've been wanting to do a real
Speaker 1: sort of off the cuff conversation with everyone since.
Speaker 2: Honestly twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1: But now that we've explored some new stories, and we
Speaker 1: have a lot of cool news stories that we're exploring
Speaker 1: still and have yet to share, this is the time
Speaker 1: we should just actually break down one or genuine thoughts
Speaker 1: on everything we've covered in two some of the personal
Speaker 1: experiences we've had that kind of paint the picture a
Speaker 1: little bit better, and to me, that matters the things
Speaker 1: that kind of go unnoticed. There's a lot of nuance
Speaker 1: when it comes to when you're conducting an interview with
Speaker 1: somebody and you're talking about something that's kind of.
Speaker 2: Kind of weird. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think something that people don't realize is so much
Speaker 3: gets left on the cutting room floor during these interviews,
Speaker 3: and like we use the best pieces, but there's still
Speaker 3: so much more that like you guys never see, but
Speaker 3: we know about and we desperately want to talk to
Speaker 3: anybody about it, and what better conduit to do that
Speaker 3: through than this roundtable. So I just listened to all
Speaker 3: five episodes just before we recorded this, So this is
Speaker 3: my first time hearing all five episodes, and they were
Speaker 3: fucking awesome. I mean, I think what's really unique about
Speaker 3: this season compared to last is that the investigation really
Speaker 3: took us all around the world this time, and we
Speaker 3: got to see that this is a global phenomenon, that
Speaker 3: it's happening everywhere, and so many of the stories are
Speaker 3: so similar anywhere you are in the world, and that's
Speaker 3: it's creepy, but it's fascinating at the same time. So
Speaker 3: I guess i'd like to start maybe just you know,
Speaker 3: we get right into episode one and just work our
Speaker 3: way up just so we try to cover as much
Speaker 3: as we can.
Speaker 2: Yeah it Yeah.
Speaker 3: So you know, kick us off, like where did the
Speaker 3: episode one start. It started with the congressional UAP hearings.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, okay, so you and I both we
Speaker 1: went to DC. This was I'm pretty sure we were
Speaker 1: at a bar together and we got a weird notice
Speaker 1: email from I don't know, a journalist's friend that was
Speaker 1: like tipping us off, there's gonna be a UFO conference
Speaker 1: congressional hearing tomorrow in DC.
Speaker 2: Are you going?
Speaker 1: And I was like, well, we are now, I think
Speaker 1: we can get a flight and we literally just we
Speaker 1: booked the earliest flight the next morning, and we arrived
Speaker 1: there and we were absolutely out of place.
Speaker 2: I mean, it was.
Speaker 1: Like a huge, weird college that wasn't really nice, and
Speaker 1: you're like, where's the not only where is the bathroom,
Speaker 1: but also where is the room that we should be in?
Speaker 1: And what are all these other rooms for?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 4: Yeah, can I just say that I can't remember the
Speaker 4: reason why, but I couldn't make it, and I'm so jealous.
Speaker 3: But what an experience I mean being in there. We
Speaker 3: weren't necessarily in that room, but we were in the
Speaker 3: room adjacent the extra fill room, I guess, with a
Speaker 3: bunch of other people.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that part's interesting.
Speaker 1: So, like I mean, this is they do this all
Speaker 1: the time, like every week Congress meets and stuff. They
Speaker 1: meet and do stuff that we just don't casually watch
Speaker 1: on TV. Yeah, I mean I don't.
Speaker 3: But this was probably a very filled time for that time,
Speaker 3: you know. But yeah, this was the event people wanted
Speaker 3: to go to, and there was a line out the
Speaker 3: door when we got there. People wanted to sit in
Speaker 3: and listen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it seemed like, you know, to compare it to TSA,
Speaker 1: like it seemed like, oh my gosh, there's a lot.
Speaker 2: Of people flying out.
Speaker 1: This morning, you know, yeah it's Christmas break. Yeah, it's like, okay,
Speaker 1: it must be a Thanksgiving thing. And so when we
Speaker 1: got there, we like the security line itself took kind
Speaker 1: of a long time, and then when we got into
Speaker 1: the building, it's just kind of everyone's just doing their
Speaker 1: own thing. We had no clue where to actually go.
Speaker 1: And I jokingly said, I've played it in the tape
Speaker 1: in episode one. For a second, I was like, do
Speaker 1: we just ask for the UFOs are And I'm pretty.
Speaker 2: Sure we actually just did that.
Speaker 1: We just asked somebody as said hey UFOs, and they
Speaker 1: and they just yeah, literally yeah, And some person was like, ah,
Speaker 1: this way, and we just followed another person who was
Speaker 1: either there for the same reason or they knew what
Speaker 1: the fuck we were or knew what the hell were there.
Speaker 4: He's like, third floor, I mean just kidding.
Speaker 5: Yeah, no, no, no.
Speaker 2: Yeah, not in this building.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but yeah, we we got uh we got pushed
Speaker 1: into the to the.
Speaker 5: Over the auxiliary room.
Speaker 2: Yeah, over the back of the bus. Yeah, we're like, okay, yep.
Speaker 3: But it was it was it was a much more
Speaker 3: like laid back environment. I mean, there was one hundred
Speaker 3: people plus in this room and it wasn't like, yeah,
Speaker 3: no cameras, just like the audio feed and the TV
Speaker 3: is coming in.
Speaker 1: Fac Actually there were cameras. I only know that because
Speaker 1: my sister sent me. My sister sent me a clip
Speaker 1: of me on the news that day. Yes, weird, there's
Speaker 1: a picture of me and Dylan and like it's the
Speaker 1: most like I mean, I think it was the angle
Speaker 1: and we looked so unserious in our in our suits,
Speaker 1: so we just looked like clowns. But all that to say,
Speaker 1: the experience in the the spillover room was actually unique
Speaker 1: because the tape you heard is raw from the actual
Speaker 1: congressional hearing, but in that room we were kind of
Speaker 1: separated from the tension of everyone else. And there were
Speaker 1: moments where towards the end when David Grush was saying
Speaker 1: things like crash retrieval programs and biologics recovered bodies, non
Speaker 1: human biologics.
Speaker 4: Yeah, what was the reaction in the room you guys
Speaker 4: were in, Because I know, in like the main room,
Speaker 4: the like room on cameras, where everybody was, where Grush
Speaker 4: was at, where everybody that they were, there was a
Speaker 4: little bit of ruckus.
Speaker 2: They literally started clapping.
Speaker 3: In the main congressional room where the hearing is going on,
Speaker 3: it was just dead silence. People were very stoic. Nobody
Speaker 3: had any expression on their face at all. It was
Speaker 3: just give the facts, get it on the record. But
Speaker 3: in this room next door, people are clapping and gasping
Speaker 3: whenever something crazy would happen, and people were laughing, and
Speaker 3: just like it was such a different, unique experience.
Speaker 5: It's such a cool way to experience it.
Speaker 1: I looked, I remember I looked at you in the face.
Speaker 1: When people started clapping, it was like, what is happening?
Speaker 1: Because they felt just bizarre. I'm like, one we flew
Speaker 1: here on a whim to go to this random, suspenseful
Speaker 1: UAP congressional hearing where some whistleblowers going to give some
Speaker 1: bombshell information and turns out he does still a big mystery.
Speaker 1: But we're sitting in there and we're hearing this happen live,
Speaker 1: and it's like everyone in at least the room that
Speaker 1: we're in is basically it felt like.
Speaker 4: We were in a room full of fans, yeah, fanboy stuff.
Speaker 1: And a part of me was like, Okay, is this
Speaker 1: like UFO fan people? But then I kind of backtracked
Speaker 1: a little bit and was like, Okay, maybe maybe some yes,
Speaker 1: But there's also a level of people here who clearly
Speaker 1: weren't just UFO fan people who flew in or drove
Speaker 1: here from Virginia. There were other people there who seemed
Speaker 1: to have been people who probably touted this same sort
Speaker 1: of energy and the same topic for a long time
Speaker 1: and felt maybe vindicated or something.
Speaker 4: Well, think about how popular Star Wars is, Star Trek is.
Speaker 4: You don't have to be necessarily a UFO fanboy to
Speaker 4: be excited for this news that you probably knew was
Speaker 4: coming at some point in your life. But Steven Spielberg,
Speaker 4: all of his movies e t close encounters like there
Speaker 4: are people who are just deep down fans of wanting
Speaker 4: to believe.
Speaker 1: I guess that's why I felt weird because I was
Speaker 1: at Congress, literally in a suit, out of place. I
Speaker 1: felt like I was at a church on a Sunday
Speaker 1: where I didn't know if I had all the right
Speaker 1: things in order, and I was you know, I was
Speaker 1: at a place I was like, Okay, are we.
Speaker 2: Doing this right?
Speaker 1: And then when people were clapping and awing and owing,
Speaker 1: I was kind of like, what the hell is going on?
Speaker 1: I'm kind of split on what that meant. I think
Speaker 1: there was, Yeah, there was some people who were like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we told you so, but like, I don't really like
Speaker 1: that energy. But I'm also kind of like maybe they're right.
Speaker 1: Like I'm like, well, I mean I've always kind of
Speaker 1: thought that too. But either way, we're witnessing something that's
Speaker 1: profound to happen at Congress. And regardless of whether David
Speaker 1: Grush is telling the truth or not, he testified under
Speaker 1: oath under penalty of law and made some very bold claims,
Speaker 1: and as someone who seems to say it in a
Speaker 1: very believable.
Speaker 3: Way, yeah, I mean it. Being there it felt like
Speaker 3: a very historic event. I remember when when we were
Speaker 3: sitting in that room, I was texting all my family
Speaker 3: and friends just being like, wake up, go watch this
Speaker 3: right now. This is disclosure happening.
Speaker 2: You're you're awake.
Speaker 5: Wake up at ten am.
Speaker 4: I thought it's like, get woke, you wake up.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I remember thinking like this is disclosure, Like this is
Speaker 3: he's the whistleblower. It's going to happen today and we're here,
Speaker 3: and I thought it was this and it you know,
Speaker 3: in a sense, it was I think the first step.
Speaker 3: It was the first step towards disclosure.
Speaker 2: I mean that is what happened.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was a small step towards disclosure. But I
Speaker 3: think in hindsight, I mean that was what two or
Speaker 3: three years ago now, and I'd argue, we're really no
Speaker 3: closer than we were then. There have been maybe three
Speaker 3: other meetings that were similar with other whistleblowers that have
Speaker 3: come out in Congress. But it kind of sucks to
Speaker 3: see we're this far into it and nothing's really changed.
Speaker 3: We're really no closer to disclosure than we were at
Speaker 3: the very beginning a few years ago, or at any
Speaker 3: point in history. I would argue, and that that was
Speaker 3: kind of a bummer. But I'm curious what you guys
Speaker 3: think about that.
Speaker 1: I would first argue, is that actually true? I don't
Speaker 1: think that's actually factually true. I mean, I could see
Speaker 1: how it. I mean, one, the entire UFO narrative is exhausting,
Speaker 1: and it has been its entire existence. But I wouldn't
Speaker 1: say that David Grusha's test simony and all this happened
Speaker 1: since then is a dead end.
Speaker 4: I would first say that I think everyone, everyone, to
Speaker 4: a certain extent, I think people do just plain and
Speaker 4: simple want to believe. I think more people than are
Speaker 4: willing to admit want to believe. To play Devil's Advocate
Speaker 4: with David Grush. As much as I love what David
Speaker 4: Grush said, it didn't prove anything. It didn't push the
Speaker 4: needle forward. Yes, I was so excited when he said
Speaker 4: the things he did. Biologics, pilots, recovered crash materials. These
Speaker 4: are all the things people who want to believe have
Speaker 4: been waiting for someone of some credential to say. But
Speaker 4: there was no smoking gun, there was no proof, there
Speaker 4: was no video footage, there was no real right. It
Speaker 4: was nothing more more than what we've heard since the eighties, which.
Speaker 1: This to me, brings me to the biggest question there
Speaker 1: is to anyone period about kind of anything, but especially
Speaker 1: this topic.
Speaker 2: What is proof to you? Like, straight up, what is
Speaker 2: proof to you? Actually?
Speaker 1: Because what if so and so went to Congress and said, hey,
Speaker 1: the same things David Grush said anything whatever, Hey, we
Speaker 1: have uh, we have all these spacecraft in Area fifty one,
Speaker 1: and we have we have uh non human bodies, we
Speaker 1: have non human biologics and aliens.
Speaker 2: Here, here's the photos. Then what.
Speaker 1: Does that become something where we just kind of debate
Speaker 1: whether or not it's true.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've heard you both say in the past. You know,
Speaker 3: even if with one certainty disclosure happened and UFOs landed
Speaker 3: on the White House salawn and said, hey, we're here,
Speaker 3: check us out, even then, fifty percent of people would
Speaker 3: say that's bullshit, that's AI, that isn't really happening. They'd
Speaker 3: come up with some excuse to not believe it, and
Speaker 3: the other half might believe it. But I think what
Speaker 3: fascinated me to the most about David Gresher's testimony and
Speaker 3: you know, more recent testimonies, is that people say people
Speaker 3: in really high positions of power in the military and
Speaker 3: the government are coming out and saying these crazy things,
Speaker 3: and then there's just no real response from people. It
Speaker 3: doesn't seem like maybe people are desensitized to it in
Speaker 3: a way, but it doesn't seem like people design. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and it could be by design, but it doesn't seem
Speaker 3: like people really were chaotic and afraid in the way
Speaker 3: that I think a lot of people were afraid that
Speaker 3: they would be. I think we almost went too far,
Speaker 3: and now people don't even care about it. And maybe
Speaker 3: that's what I'm seeing more than anything, is that people
Speaker 3: seem so desensitized in our news cycle and everything going
Speaker 3: on with the media that when these claims are happening,
Speaker 3: it didn't even make the top news cycle of the day,
Speaker 3: you know, and that was a little disheartening. But also
Speaker 3: so maybe it's promising for disclosure in the future. At
Speaker 3: some point, maybe we are ready to learn something more
Speaker 3: about what's out there in the world, if that information
Speaker 3: does exist.
Speaker 2: To kind of shift gears here.
Speaker 1: I want to say that in general, I've always been
Speaker 1: of the mind where the UFO topic a decade ago
Speaker 1: to me was always kind of tiresome.
Speaker 2: It was just something.
Speaker 1: But yeah, me personally, I would I want to believe
Speaker 1: tiresome because it felt like it was so fringe. All
Speaker 1: of a sudden, there was incredible stories from whistleblowers and
Speaker 1: people from the government and things connecting in ways where hey,
Speaker 1: this is actually just real reporting, not just fun semi
Speaker 1: fictional documentary kind of stuff you see on some TV network, right,
Speaker 1: And that sort of mentality is gone. So what's here
Speaker 1: now is I feel like everyone in the world because
Speaker 1: they have a phone, And I don't blame them, I'm
Speaker 1: you too. We want proof of everything, But what is
Speaker 1: proof exactly? And I don't mean that in some like
Speaker 1: total weirdo abstract way, I really don't. I mean it
Speaker 1: in a way that's like, what is proof to you?
Speaker 1: Like actually, and what does that mean? This whole topic
Speaker 1: has converged at a point in technology of us where
Speaker 1: it just so happens that AI can basically make everything
Speaker 1: that could be a drone that's AI, that's fake.
Speaker 2: It's like everything's just kind of muddied.
Speaker 3: With technology today. You can no longer believe your eyes
Speaker 3: or your ears, and that makes you question what even
Speaker 3: can be real, what can be classified as real, what
Speaker 3: can we even agree on as real? In today's media
Speaker 3: escape And it's so hard to know. I mean, nobody
Speaker 3: has the answer for that, but I will say, bringing
Speaker 3: it back to high strange, what I loved about this
Speaker 3: season was that we focused on archival cases or cases
Speaker 3: from decades ago when the waters were much less muddy,
Speaker 3: when you had real recordings of people from the seventies
Speaker 3: and eighties, When you have audio recordings of Dave Davies
Speaker 3: and Whitley Streiber when their children are very young, telling
Speaker 3: exactly the same story decades ago that they're telling now.
Speaker 3: For me, I think, especially in today's landscape, that brings
Speaker 3: so much credibility to their stories, and it gives you
Speaker 3: sort of like a baseline of something to believe that
Speaker 3: is true. And I love that we focused on those
Speaker 3: cases in this season because you just I think you
Speaker 3: guys did a really great job of like putting those
Speaker 3: stories together and telling them in a way that's like
Speaker 3: really manageable and understandable and give some real element of
Speaker 3: like truth and investigation to this field.
Speaker 4: I would even counterpoint a little bit what you were
Speaker 4: saying Johnny Mack, who wrote, you know, the book on
Speaker 4: abductions and doing all of the research into people who
Speaker 4: are experiencers schackvall Ay they've been doing this for so
Speaker 4: long without anyone believing them.
Speaker 1: There's been some legit people who aren't all fringe conspiracy right,
Speaker 1: who were just.
Speaker 4: Hey, like look, no, they're on the matter of.
Speaker 1: Just talking about this stuff and been researching this stuff
Speaker 1: their fucking whole life.
Speaker 4: So like David is like, finally that like told you so,
Speaker 4: almost right, or it could be, could be. But you
Speaker 4: can also say, yeah, you know, all these people have
Speaker 4: been maybe making all this up. But there's just if
Speaker 4: you really really dig in and you really really research
Speaker 4: the topic, there are so much that points more towards
Speaker 4: that there is something versus in my opinion, pointing towards
Speaker 4: it's all made up.
Speaker 1: That makes me think about the physical things that we've
Speaker 1: seen this season.
Speaker 2: I'm talking about literally in Oregon.
Speaker 1: We went to Oregon for the mcmainville UFO Festival, and
Speaker 1: we kind of all split off into different camps and
Speaker 1: we're recording different things, and then tilling you ended up
Speaker 1: in the middle of nowhere eastern Oregon. Literally, we thought
Speaker 1: you were missing for like twenty four hours.
Speaker 2: We were like, okay, we'll give it what it was.
Speaker 1: We'll give it about twelve more hours before we'd call
Speaker 1: the police.
Speaker 4: The amount of times your phone just straight up did
Speaker 4: not like.
Speaker 2: Should we be concerned. We're like, nah, it's stealing.
Speaker 1: We're like, okay, in twelve hours, if he has not responded,
Speaker 1: we're definitely sending out an alert.
Speaker 5: I'm glad to know you guys have my back, because
Speaker 5: I was fucking no.
Speaker 2: It was like, okay, what was the last time he
Speaker 2: texted you.
Speaker 1: We're all we're all checking each other like it, but
Speaker 1: he texted you then, and then then okay he last service?
Speaker 2: Then okay, Yeah, it makes sense.
Speaker 4: I did pull the mom move of being like, yo,
Speaker 4: you gotta check in call me when you get to call.
Speaker 1: Me, and like we knew you weren't, like so we
Speaker 1: would be on a call with you and you're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm actually about to.
Speaker 2: Oh like Dylan Dylan dyn Yeah, man.
Speaker 3: There was I mean, there was no cell signal anywhere
Speaker 3: in like the part of Oregon, this like one hundred
Speaker 3: square mile area that I was in an organ but yeah,
Speaker 3: I just you know, we went out there for the
Speaker 3: UFO Fest and I just decided to break away, take
Speaker 3: a rental car and just you know, with nothing but
Speaker 3: a dream, just go to a bunch of random little
Speaker 3: towns and just like hope, I'd run into something. In
Speaker 3: the eighties, there was a string of cattle mutilations that
Speaker 3: happened all throughout eastern Oregon, and as the story goes,
Speaker 3: all of these ranchers all over the area would find
Speaker 3: these mutilated cows. And it's not necessarily weird to find
Speaker 3: dead cows on a property as big and as expansive
Speaker 3: as eastern organ Is and these ranches, which are hundreds
Speaker 3: of square miles each. But what was weird about this
Speaker 3: subsect of cattle mutilations. It was that they all had
Speaker 3: the same type of mutilation. They would have the genitals
Speaker 3: cut off, they would have the tongue taken out sometimes
Speaker 3: like the cheek and the eye taken out. But what
Speaker 3: was weird about it is that happened in the eighties.
Speaker 3: It was written off as a satanic cult at the time,
Speaker 3: and that became the narrative, the global narrative, and the zeitgeist.
Speaker 3: And there were two camps of people, some who thought
Speaker 3: it was a satanic cult and some who thought it
Speaker 3: was aliens. And that's why in today's pop culture you'll
Speaker 3: see things like cows being zipped up into UFOs, being
Speaker 3: tractor beamed up. It comes from these stories in eastern
Speaker 3: Oregon of these mutilated cows that were very unexplained and
Speaker 3: nobody ever really found an answer.
Speaker 5: There were a lot of.
Speaker 3: Theories, but it was never solved. But I was curious,
Speaker 3: you know, was that still going on? Is that still
Speaker 3: a thing? Or were these people around. Were the people
Speaker 3: who were there in the eighties still around? Would they
Speaker 3: want to talk? And luckily, you know, all three of
Speaker 3: our brands combined, we figured it out. I went out
Speaker 3: there and I struck out a few times, and then luckily,
Speaker 3: you guys found a name online that led to one thing,
Speaker 3: it led to another, and then before he knew it,
Speaker 3: we had four or five interviews of just all these
Speaker 3: people telling the same story across hundreds of square miles,
Speaker 3: which was we own cattle, we're multi generation cattle ranchers,
Speaker 3: and we're all seeing these weird, mutilated deaths of our
Speaker 3: cattle and they're completely unexplained. Nobody's helping us. The police
Speaker 3: can't help. We have no answer, and we need help.
Speaker 3: And that was the through line of all these stories.
Speaker 3: And it was creepy to be out there on the
Speaker 3: ground seeing that and documenting it. And we didn't talk
Speaker 3: about it in the season. Maybe it'll be next season,
Speaker 3: who knows. But yeah, So I went to one ranch
Speaker 3: and the ranchers wanted to remain anonymous, so I'll keep
Speaker 3: them anonymous. But they told me when I got there,
Speaker 3: one rancher connected me to another and they said, hey,
Speaker 3: we actually have a mutilated cow on our property right now.
Speaker 3: She died nine days ago, and it has all the
Speaker 3: classic symptoms of everything. Tongue's gone, genital's gone, no blood
Speaker 3: on the scene. It's been flattened as if it were
Speaker 3: dropped from a great height and it just landed on
Speaker 3: the ground. And there's a bunch of other weird stuff about,
Speaker 3: like the time it took to deteriorate, and you know,
Speaker 3: animals and predators wanted to scavenge the bones, and just
Speaker 3: a bunch of weird stuff. Generally you saw though, but
Speaker 3: I saw it. Yeah, I got to go there. It
Speaker 3: was pictures, right, I've got pictures and videos and we'll
Speaker 3: put those on social post them. Yeah, we'll get them
Speaker 3: on social. Part of this is probably a little illegal,
Speaker 3: so I'm not going to say all the details. Oh God,
Speaker 3: but when when I saw this cow, my first thought
Speaker 3: was like I gotta collect some samples of this fucking thing.
Speaker 3: Like I'm probably two hours from cell signal on this ranch.
Speaker 3: I mean literally middle of the desert, nowhere.
Speaker 2: No one's looking.
Speaker 3: I had a knife and I had a cup, so
Speaker 3: I you know, I cut off some samples of the dirt.
Speaker 3: I cut off some samples of the cow, and then
Speaker 3: I shipped it to a through an undisclosed mail carrier called.
Speaker 2: The United States. I don't think what matters to Portland,
Speaker 2: to the FedEx more.
Speaker 3: Maybe though, that's actually that's surprisingly close to what I
Speaker 3: actually Okay, I mailed some pieces of this cow back
Speaker 3: to our office, and they still sit in this office.
Speaker 3: I gotta tell you where, but it's still stealed.
Speaker 2: Up it here. I'm with him. We've sent this in
Speaker 2: for testing. We're waiting for results.
Speaker 5: And we'll see.
Speaker 3: But anyway, that's I mean, more or less, that's the story.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 3: I traveled all over Oregon. I talked to I think
Speaker 3: in total, four ranchers and a sheriff, and all of
Speaker 3: them told me the same story, that this is a
Speaker 3: very real phenomenon. None of them have an answer for it,
Speaker 3: and they're all a little bit terrified of what the
Speaker 3: answer might be, and all of them, for the most part,
Speaker 3: I'd say four out of five truly deeply believed aliens
Speaker 3: were involved and that it must be UFOs involved.
Speaker 1: So one thing I want to clear up really fast,
Speaker 1: because when I made High Strained Season one, one of
Speaker 1: my friends bought me this little Etsy thing where it
Speaker 1: was a cow being abducted by a UFO, the classic
Speaker 1: kind of thing, right, And it's kind of just a
Speaker 1: ridiculous symbolic it's a trope, right, But when you look
Speaker 1: at this for real, you have real farmers, real ranchers.
Speaker 1: This is their business. They're real cowboys. They're out there
Speaker 1: these animals themselves. They're not just pets. They're a business
Speaker 1: for them. And so when you start kind of breaking
Speaker 1: it down when you have these ranchers saying something weird
Speaker 1: happened to my animal, which is like their livelihood almost
Speaker 1: kind of the equivalent of someone who has horses or something,
Speaker 1: and they're like, one of my horses is maimed or
Speaker 1: is hurt, and I raise horses.
Speaker 2: I wouldn't do this to my horse.
Speaker 1: It's kind of the same idea, and you're like, Okay,
Speaker 1: nothing to gain from them by making this up.
Speaker 2: They're kind of like yelling into the void.
Speaker 1: Maybe some journalists in Portland, Oregon will pick it up
Speaker 1: and they'll do it one time and they're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's some there's still weird cattle things going on down there,
Speaker 1: but what is actually going on. It's such an unbelievable
Speaker 1: thing that if you're not informed, I would totally understand
Speaker 1: why your first thought would be that this is entirely bullshit.
Speaker 1: But it's not made up at all. You have real
Speaker 1: ranchers who were literally only saying I don't know how
Speaker 1: my animals died, and I want to know why, to
Speaker 1: the extent where I will call the Sheriff's office, I'll
Speaker 1: put up a reward, and ten years later, I'll talk
Speaker 1: to you about it. Because I still lose sleep about this.
Speaker 1: And they're hesitant about some extraterrestrial explanation, but they're also
Speaker 1: strangely like, but maybe because everything else becomes equally as weird.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's one thing to hear these stories on the
Speaker 3: podcast through the lens of like this beautiful theatrical edit
Speaker 3: with all these cool music tracks and sound effects and everything.
Speaker 2: You mean, like high strange, like.
Speaker 3: Something like a podcast called high Strange but you hear
Speaker 3: it through that lens and you think, oh, it's just
Speaker 3: like a story.
Speaker 2: It's just like a movie, that's what I mean.
Speaker 3: And it's like it's kind of fantastical fear, it's very fantastical.
Speaker 3: But under that lens, like under the service of that,
Speaker 3: when you're really sitting in the room with these people,
Speaker 3: you realize like they fully believe and it's not even
Speaker 3: a belief, like they are living this every day.
Speaker 1: They're thanking us for covering this, like they were very thankful.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we have no clue.
Speaker 1: What the hell is going on, and we hope that
Speaker 1: we find out one day, So thanks for keeping this
Speaker 1: in the zeitgeist.
Speaker 3: And the thing is like, none of them have answers.
Speaker 3: But when I think, when your brain doesn't have an answer,
Speaker 3: it tends to fill the void with something. You said
Speaker 3: this in you know, one of the episodes, and it's
Speaker 3: a very real phenomenon. And I saw that happen with
Speaker 3: all these people where they didn't have answers. So they
Speaker 3: did what any rational human being would do is go
Speaker 3: and google the answers, google the questions and see what
Speaker 3: answers appear. And every time they all I think diverged
Speaker 3: onto the same place in the Internet, which was cattle
Speaker 3: mutilations in relation to UFOs, and it was all of
Speaker 3: the pictures and all the videos seeing cattles that have
Speaker 3: been mutilated all over the world in exactly the way
Speaker 3: that their cows were, and that gave them this understanding
Speaker 3: that oh shit, this isn't just happening to me. It's
Speaker 3: happening everywhere, and it's called cattle mutilations and it's UFOs
Speaker 3: causing it. So I think it was like almost like
Speaker 3: a retroactive process where like these people saw their cows
Speaker 3: getting mutilated, had no idea what to think of it,
Speaker 3: asked the authorities they didn't know, asked their friends and family, who,
Speaker 3: by the way, also had similar things happen, but didn't
Speaker 3: want to talk about it publicly. With me, it's happening
Speaker 3: all over the place out there, but I think they
Speaker 3: only could come to that final answer, which is the
Speaker 3: only thing that we have today, which is cattle mutilations
Speaker 3: in aliens. And who knows if that's real or if
Speaker 3: it's not real, but the facts are it's definitely really happening.
Speaker 3: Those cows really died. I saw them myself, and these
Speaker 3: people seem to believe that it is aliens, So make
Speaker 3: of that way you will.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean they may seem to believe that, they
Speaker 1: also definitely don't know what it is. That's that's the
Speaker 1: that's the real thing is that they're not trying to
Speaker 1: sell any of anyone as story. They're basically saying, hands up,
Speaker 1: my animal got killed. Can anyone help me figure out
Speaker 1: how this is happening?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 4: I would love to just push this thought experiment a
Speaker 4: little further down the road and bring up that Whitley
Speaker 4: was the butt of the joke of episode one of
Speaker 4: South Park?
Speaker 2: Wait was he actually episode one? It was the this
Speaker 2: is when they did the probe joke. The probe joke.
Speaker 4: This is one of the biggest turns out, one of
Speaker 4: the biggest cartoons in the history of.
Speaker 1: I mean humans. If you don't almost hell pargoes, then
Speaker 1: you don't know what anything is.
Speaker 4: But like, how much did that push the narrative? Like
Speaker 4: how much do these ranchers not want to come forward
Speaker 4: and be like, we think it could have been a
Speaker 4: we think it's non human. Right, you're now the butt
Speaker 4: of the joke because you're saying the thing that you
Speaker 4: actually just believe. Right, maybe Whitley is in the same
Speaker 4: spot where he's like, I'm just saying my experience what
Speaker 4: I believe, same as these ranchers, this is what happened
Speaker 4: to me.
Speaker 2: How do you deal with that? I will say this,
Speaker 2: Whitley'streeber's story is polarizing.
Speaker 1: When I look at Whitley's story, one I take into
Speaker 1: account that he's made several best selling novels based on
Speaker 1: his stories.
Speaker 2: He's also made movies, and that's all good.
Speaker 1: I mean to be honest, if this ever genuinely happened
Speaker 1: to me, I would hope to have done the same thing.
Speaker 1: So I'm not gonna use that as some sort of
Speaker 1: discounting factor here, but at the same time, as a
Speaker 1: storyteller myself and as a kind of journalistic mind, the
Speaker 1: first place my mind wanders is and I kind of
Speaker 1: asked him this sort of off the cuff, where does
Speaker 1: this sort of fictionalized version maybe blend with the real version?
Speaker 1: Not in some way where it's that I'm trying to
Speaker 1: disprove anything that That's where I think that this becomes
Speaker 1: a stupid debate. Whitley Strieber believes that that happened to him.
Speaker 1: Now he also made blockbuster movies and novels about this.
Speaker 3: I do want to ask two things. I want to
Speaker 3: ask about the implant in his ear?
Speaker 5: You felt it?
Speaker 2: I did?
Speaker 5: What did it feel like?
Speaker 4: What?
Speaker 3: Like, describe the shape of it? Did it feel like anything?
Speaker 3: Or did it just seem like it was like a sister?
Speaker 3: What was your take?
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not a doctor, so to me, it
Speaker 1: felt like a BB, like a from a BB gun.
Speaker 1: Imagine like a slightly smaller BB maybe fine.
Speaker 2: It wasn't like a.
Speaker 1: Skin tag kind of thing where it was like I'd like,
Speaker 1: oh that he's like right here, and I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: under his skin.
Speaker 2: Under his skin like in his ear lobe hm.
Speaker 5: I do wonder that.
Speaker 3: So he says in his interview that it activated thirty
Speaker 3: minutes ago. Did he give you any more information about
Speaker 3: like what the hell he was talking about?
Speaker 2: Like he did?
Speaker 3: What was his theory on what that was? It sounded
Speaker 3: like he was saying it was like recording or it
Speaker 3: was listening right like what was going on with that?
Speaker 1: He basically told me that he believes this implant of
Speaker 1: his in his ear makes him smarter, more creative, and
Speaker 1: that is not always on, and that when it does
Speaker 1: turn on that he's more active and more in tune
Speaker 1: and can access more of his own brain, and I
Speaker 1: kind of challenged it, and then his response was actually
Speaker 1: kind of neutral. He was basically saying to me that
Speaker 1: he wishes other people had this same thing, and not
Speaker 1: like in a I'm better than you kind of way,
Speaker 1: in a way where he's like, it's a shame that
Speaker 1: this is like some technology that would benefit other people.
Speaker 1: There are parts of Whitley Strieber's story that, from a
Speaker 1: human standpoint, maybe I have trouble seeing between the lines
Speaker 1: of where his incredible fiction narration blends to his real life.
Speaker 1: And I don't know what those lines are. I don't
Speaker 1: know what that gray area is, but without a doubt,
Speaker 1: I do think something did happen to him. We have
Speaker 1: so many stories we've researched and people we've talked to,
Speaker 1: insane ufhone encounters that we've not even included in this
Speaker 1: first installment, to the point where.
Speaker 2: We just said, Okay, screw it.
Speaker 1: We're doing an entire season three as well, dropping in June.
Speaker 1: I Strange is a production by tender Foot TV in
Speaker 1: association with iHeart Podcasts, created, hosted, and edited by myself
Speaker 1: Payne Lindsay. Executive producers are myself and Donald Albright. Editing
Speaker 1: by Mike Roney, Cooper Skinner and myself. Original scorer by
Speaker 1: Makeup and Vanity Set, sound design, mixing and mastering by
Speaker 1: Cooper Skinner. Additional production by Mike Roney, Dylan Harrington, Eric Quintana,
Speaker 1: Sean Nurney, and Meredith Steedman.
Speaker 2: Our cover art is by Polygon.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Orrin Rosenbaum and the whole team at UTA,
Speaker 1: the Nord Group Station sixteen in Beck Media and Marketing.
Speaker 1: Check out the show's website at Highstrange dot com, and
Speaker 1: if you're enjoying the show, please help us out by
Speaker 1: rating and reviewing the podcast and share it with your friends.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening.